manticore/README.md

manticore

Manticore is a symbolic execution engine for binary analysis, usable as a command line tool or Python Library (pre-alpha).

It executes multiple paths of a program simultaneously by replacing input data with a set of constraints representing all possible values of that data, allowing it to thoroughly discover numerous paths as the program executes control flow. By solving the constraints with a theorem prover, Manticore generates concrete inputs to trigger discovered paths.

features

• Input Generation: Manticore automatically generates inputs that trigger unique code paths.
• Defect Discovery: Manticore discovers program defects enabling memory safety violations and generates inputs to trigger them.
• Execution Tracing: Manticore records an instruction-level trace of the program's execution for each generated input.
• Concolic Execution: Manticore loads memory dumps of running Windows programs to allow deep state space exploration.
• Programmatic Interface (pre-alpha): Manticore exposes programmatic access to its symbolic execution engine via a Python API.

scope

Manticore supports binaries of the following formats, operating systems, and architectures. It has been primarily used on binaries compiled from C and C++.

• OS/Formats: Linux ELF, Windows Minidump
• Architectures: x86, x86_64, ARMv7

requirements

Manticore is officially supported on Linux and uses Python 2.7.

required dependencies

• Python Dependencies: Run pip install -r requirements.txt
• Z3 Theorem Prover: Download the latest release for your platform from https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3/releases/latest, and place the enclosed z3 binary in your $PATH.
  • Alternatively, CVC4 or Yices can be used.

development dependencies

• keystone: Used in unit tests

usage

python main.py ./path/to/binary  # runs, and creates a directory with analysis results

or

# example Manticore script
from manticore import Manticore

hook_pc = 0x400ca0

m = Manticore('./path/to/binary')

@m.hook(hook_pc)
def hook(state):
  cpu = state.cpu
  print 'eax', cpu.EAX
  print cpu.read_int(cpu.SP)
  
  m.terminate()  # tell Manticore to stop

m.run()